Monday, December 09, 2013

The Elites Do Not Create Jobs; They Export Them!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Some years ago, I covered a news conference held in Houston by Milton Friedman, the darling of the U.S. right wing for his near laissez-faire economic perspective. Friedman was wrong but would never admit it. In fact, when someone raised the issue of "job exportation", Friedman was adamant: "jobs are not exported!" The working person knows better!

At last, a major media outlet is telling the truth about economics! "Business Insider" now says: "Sorry, Folks, Rich People Actually Don't 'Create Jobs'! They are a bit late! I was saying that in my very first economics class as a Freshman. I never believed that "wealth trickled down" or the focus group approved label: "supply-side economics". It was all bunkum when Reagan exploited it to float his tax cuts for the very rich; it is bunkum now but, alas, too late to prevent the decline of U.S. industry --steel, automobiles, radios, electronics. Those industries are now dominated by China and Japan. Wal-Mart may be their "agent" in the U.S.

"As America struggles with high unemployment and record inequality, everyone is offering competing solutions to the problem. In this war of words (and classes), one thing has been repeated so often that many people now regard it as fact.

This statement is typically invoked to justify cutting taxes on entrepreneurs and investors. If only we reduce those taxes and regulations, the story goes, entrepreneurs and investors can be incented to build more companies and create more jobs.

GOP right wing elitsts are wrong when they propose that wealth is the creation of ultra-super rich tycoons, robber barons, the top 1 percent. These folk do NOT create wealth; rather --they siphon (or suck) the wealth that is, in fact, created by labor. The very rich move money around --most often to offshore accounts. Even the conservative economist Adam Smith (the father of modern economics) believed that "value" was created by "labor".

Related is the fact that the U.S. is no longer a NET EXPORTING NATION. We occupy the very bottom of the CIA's own World Fact Book with the world's LARGEST NEGATIVE Current Account Balance (formerly called the Balance of Trade Deficit); Guess who is on top!! CHINA! It is easy enough to trace this trend to Nixon's trip to China. I have reason to believe that the trip had been set up by Bush Sr. It may have been the high price U.S. labor was forced to pay to get our sorry asses out of Viet Nam.

I must hasten to add that neither Obama nor Clinton is responsible for this outcome. The details of America's "new" relationship with China was worked out during the Nixon administration --most obviously by George H.W. Bush, Nixon's "special envoy" to China. The result of these U.S. trade concessions may be seen in in the aisles of Wal-Mart, the empty houses in Detroit, the stilled mills in Pittsburgh.